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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25936618">Henry and the Teleporter</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coelpts/pseuds/Coelpts'>Coelpts</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Henry Stickmin Series (Video Games)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Violence, Gets a bit messy at the end, Henry can't make the teleporter go, Henry has a bad day, POV Second Person, Takes place during each of the games, Uncontrollable Teleportation, unreality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:47:41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,990</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25936618</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coelpts/pseuds/Coelpts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Teleporter is a new, emergent piece of technology you have...ahem. Acquired.</p><p>Surely after a full year of testing in the field it'll work, right?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>216</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Into the Bank</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The Teleporter is a new, emergent piece of technology you have...ahem. <em>Acquired</em>, just for this mission. Apparently it’s very simple and easy to use, and especially convenient to get into places you have absolutely no reason being in.</p><p>Well, you do have a reason to be in the Bank Vault. You’re broke as hell and need some moolah. That’s a good enough reason, right?</p><p>No time like the present. You looked at the instructions for about five minutes before you left, you think you’ve got this. Set it to relative direction, forward 10 feet, up 3 feet, because you don’t want to teleport INTO a bag of money, just ONTO the bags of money, and GO.</p><p>The device vibrates in your hand, calculating the information provided via its various interfaces. Apparently it may need to do some testing teleports before the real thing to evaluate direction, so you brace yourself.</p><p>Your stomach lurches as you are structurally decompiled and the world begins to shimmer away from you. Oh, <em>that’s</em> unpleasant. 3/5 stars, that’s a bug that needs fixing. Were these the test teleports, or-</p><p>Without warning, you no longer occupy the space you used to. After a short lapse in vision, you’re...forward and to the right a few paces. Then, back and to the left. Your vision stretches and, for a moment, you see the blue horizon instead of the Bank. </p><p>Then, the Bank is all you <em>can</em> see.</p><p>It doesn’t...hurt. It feels like your arm and entire lower body were just enveloped by cool concrete. Your left hand is still holding the teleporter somewhere in there. You might’ve entered the wrong directions, <em>or</em> this thing might be a hunk of junk.</p><p>You pat the wall a few times. Solid.</p><p>Welp.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>It’s emergent technology. I’m sure it will get better!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Out of Prison</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Inside the cake was...A teleporter! A new, emergent piece of technology that only released to private members of the public about a month ago! You had...erm... </p>
<p>Well, no use in beating around the bush, you’re already in prison. You signed up for the beta testing period using the payday you got from pawning off some, <em>redistributed</em> goods. It was supposed to be rent money, but the teleporter was new tech, and you <em>had</em> to get new tech!</p>
<p>Unfortunately you weren’t able to try it out during the heist. You used a disguise instead, and look at where <em>that</em> got you. Maybe this was the right choice after all, and this bad boy was your ticket out of here!</p>
<p>You read the instructions once, about a month ago, so you hope the device hasn’t seen any major updates since then. Lets see, if you remember right you’re about nine stories up. So, relative direction, 90 feet down. The prison was...large, so...about 120, 140 feet forward? That sounded about right.</p>
<p>You close your eyes on instinct as you press GO. The device starts up remarkably quickly, evaluating the inputs and its user before activating with a satisfying whirr.</p>
<p>Well, you don’t <em>feel</em> like you’re being ripped apart molecule by molecule. The teleportation experience is a bit pleasant, actually. 5/5, would be engulfed by warm light again.</p>
<p>The device winds down and you feel your feet on solid ground. You pop open one eye- were you safe? Was this the ultimate sneaky breakout?</p>
<p>“Ready?”</p>
<p>Wait a minute. Where were you?</p>
<p>“Fire!”</p>
<p>Oh, <em>that’s</em> not good-</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>You just can't seem to get the hang of that thing can you?</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. On Top of The Museum</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You look over your blueprints again. The Tunisian Diamond was in the archeological exhibit at the back end of the museum. The exhibit entrances were heavily monitored, there were cameras all over the place. Effectively the entire exhibit had eyes watching everything…</p><p>Except for, oddly, the diamond itself. Based on your recent legal visit to the gallery, there were catwalks running across the exhibit to hang lights on that guards didn’t patrol. On top of all that, the exhibit was connected to the art gallery storage, which was <em>notoriously</em> understaffed if what you’ve heard was true.</p><p>The plans line up almost too perfectly. It’s like someone <em>wants</em> the diamond to be stolen! And who are you to deny the opportunity?</p><p>You look back up at the museum in front of you. The best way to the catwalks without being seen is the roof access. You’d have to go up. There were a few gizmos you packed for the journey, pieces of emergent tech you <em>had</em> to get your hands on in one way or another. Jumble Hoppers, an anti-gravity cap…</p><p>...A teleporter.</p><p>You technically got this one a few months ago, for your planned bank heist, but you never got to use it. Since then the beta testing results had rolled in, and they were nothing short of catastrophic. People getting teleported into walls, out of buildings, directly in the line of fire. This thing had a <em>lot</em> more testing to go through in order to be released to the general public. But, you still had yours.</p><p>You’re not entirely certain what possessed you to bring this little thing along. The reviews were poor, and results were mixed at best. But you already spent<em> so much</em> on it…</p><p>Screw it. Might as well give it a fighting chance.</p><p>You re-read the instructions before leaving home in the unlikely event you needed this thing to get out of a pinch. First, you set the positioning as relative or enter exact coordinates. Relative. Next, you enter the information on how you want to be teleported. Let’s see, this building is around 33 feet tall, so...up 34 feet, forward 12. Finally…</p><p>Apparently, some people got severe motion sickness or were blinded by the method of teleporting in past versions. You scrunch your eyes shut and hit GO.</p><p>It takes a moment to warm up and calculate the information you gave it, and then it calculates <em>you</em>. You feel your entire body contort and expand in new and fascinating ways, crushing your organs before giving them far too much room and then some. 1/5 stars, how is this better than feeling a little queasy, developers?!</p><p>And then, you’re slapped back into existence. You feel yourself blink out, shrinking to smaller than small and thin as thin can be, before popping right back in at your desired location.</p><p>...Did you, type 43 feet instead of 34?</p><p>The moment of freefall is mercifully short but <em>distressingly</em> painful, ending with a possible concussion and the wind being knocked right out of you. You’ve got a headache, and you’re pretty sure you lost the teleporter, but…</p><p>It worked.</p><p>Fine, you amend your review. 4/5 stars.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>See, I told you it would get better!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Through the Engine Room</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You cannot <em>believe</em> the government let you in here unsupervised. No other agents? No cameras? They kidnap you, blackmail you, and then think you’ll just follow orders without question? Ha!</p><p>That ruby is yours. As soon as you cross this pit.</p><p>Lets see, lets see...the government did give you some cool and fun toys to use on your mission here, but a lot of them don’t exactly apply in this scenario. Clawpack, Retroglove, Expanding Foam…</p><p>...Teleporter.</p><p>The government gave you one of these? Weren’t they recalled after the initial beta test? You have one- well, <em>had</em> one- but the private public that got to test them out didn’t have the best of experiences with them. You didn’t really get to try it when you initially bought it. All the better, you realized after reading the reviews. Not even Gadget Gabe had good luck with it. It may have worked, once or twice, but…</p><p><em>Now</em> you had a headache. But, it was the best way across aside from jumping, so...might as well give it a shot.</p><p>This one came bundled with its instructions, so you didn’t have to try and recall what each unlabeled button did when you read the manual half a year ago. There’s actually a bunch of variables here, from relative position teleportation to exact coordinate entry, use on a moving vehicle, in space, for multiple users, across dimensions, items...with only <em>three</em> buttons for input? Sure, that’ll end well.</p><p>Well, first, set to relative teleportation. It’s about a 20 foot gap, so add a bit of buffer, that’s 25 feet forward…</p><p>You take a deep breath and close your eyes to prevent any oncoming nausea or blindness, select the moving vehicle option, and GO.</p><p>The teleporter kicks into gear, and...something sure does <em>happen</em>. Based on the instructions it needs to evaluate the vehicle being used to properly calculate the end destination. It issues a few scans, crackling and vibrating in your hand as it does. </p><p>You feel the device rumble and pop in your hand, and suddenly everything stops. You feel...cold. It’s so quiet. And…</p><p>You’re not on the airship anymore. When you finally open your eyes, you see an all encompassing <em>nothing</em> greet you. The teleporter itself is completely fried. It was...set to traveling dimensions instead of in a vehicle. Great. Maybe you shouldn't have closed your eyes before pushing that button.</p><p>Looks like you’re in Dimension 25.</p><p>2/5, technically works, needs more buttons.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Well, I'd better get going.</p><p>Have fun here by yourself!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Above the Wall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Part of you is thankful you always try to think ahead. Sure, you come up with a lot of your best plans flying by the seat of your pants. There are thinkers and do-ers, and do-ers just do it, you know how it is.</p><p>But with the Toppat mission out of the way, you <em>knew</em> there were eyes on you. A government agency was able to kidnap you once so you had to be prepared for the next time it happened. You had a considerable stock of gadgets you had collected over the last few months since your attempted heist at the bank, so you always tried to keep one on you in a hidden pocket. Thankfully, whoever was in charge of searches at the Wall wasn’t very good at their jobs.</p><p>But why, why oh <em>why</em>, did you have to be caught with this thing?</p><p>You stare down at the teleporter. It is, reportedly, a very simple device. When it was first introduced to a market of high-paying investors, it was advertised as a versatile, portable, and safer alternative to the wormhole rifle; it didn’t need a surface to properly attach a hole to, just that you knew where you were going. The investment was a great success, but when people first received their devices…</p><p>Well, all you <em>really</em> remember is the company had to recall all active devices shortly after. They were still trying to fix the bugs, but the bad PR might just kill it before it officially re-launches. It had been sitting at a snug 1/5 stars for months.</p><p>You thought you lost yours sometime around the heist of the diamond, but you were able to find it after the Toppat mission. Since then it’s been in your gadget rotation, reserved <em>exclusively</em> for days where you knew you wouldn’t be compromised and kidnapped by some shady sect and placed under arrest in some overseas high security complex. </p><p>The irony does not escape you.</p><p>Well...it’s all you’ve got. Problem now is, you don’t have any clue what these buttons actually <em>do</em>. The last time you read the instructions was at least several months ago, and at most nearly a year ago. You know one of them changes how the teleports are determined...one handles, input variables...and one of them marks special case rules. And, of course, the big red one makes it go.</p><p>Uh, well...you were in a cell. Outside is the ocean, so that’s a no go. Maybe you could zip to the top of the complex and sneak around the outside. Yeah, that was probably your best bet.</p><p>This button <em>probably</em> controlled your teleport option. Change the value here to 135 feet straight up, that should be enough. You resign to your fate, and hit GO.</p><p>Based on what you know about this teleportation sequence, it would first evaluate where you currently were and attempt to calculate a projected end point. That...doesn’t <em>seem</em> to happen. Translucent panels are formed in the air around you, seeming to scan and detail only yourself. Maybe...that was a good thing? It had an update and no longer needed to perform a full scan of the room around you?</p><p>A final panel reads you and you feel...light. Sort of floaty. You’re not able to see much beyond the bright light of the panel decoding you across space, but you definitely feel a change. The air smells different, it’s not as cold.</p><p>It’s very crowded, from what you can hear. And from what little you can see, you're <em>not</em> in Kansas anymore. Did this teleporter have a universe hopping function?</p><p>“Come on now, brothers!” A rallying cry calls in front of you, but you can’t make out who said it before you’re nearly trampled by a small militia and carried along like a completely unaware crowdsurfing bystander.</p><p>“My life for Aiu-”</p><p>Was that a<em> laser?</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>gg no re</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Crossing the Pit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>The teleporter.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You got this little number about a year ago, now. Obtained from an illicit investment, it’s been with you ever since...but you don’t think you ever <em>used</em> it, now that you think about it. Maybe, once. Or twice? Who knows. A lot can happen in a year.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You look across the gravity well pit. You knew something like this would come up. It always does. Some little hitch, a snag in your <em>perfectly</em> thought out, mostly impenetrable, off-the-cuff, improvised, ramshackle plans. But this time, you were prepared for anything.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Sure, the teleporter hasn’t had the <em>best</em> of reviews. Sure, it entered the market as a catastrophic failure. But since then, almost all the bugs were ironed out, and now you had a perfectly functioning teleportation solution. And you were going to use it!</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You activate the space function of the device and enter the relative destination- 20 feet ahead. Based on the ship itself and what you saw, it should be rotating in...this direction, which means…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>You hit GO with confidence. It rumbles in your hand, causing a point in space above your head to become a teleportation conduit. It all but absorbs you into its embrace, bringing you into a point of absolute spatial concentration…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And releases you directly above the pit.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Hm. Maybe those reviews were on to something after all.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hey, it's like one of those old fail-based flash games!</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Crossing the Pit...?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>You’re back up <em>here</em>. On the other side of the pit of the gravity well. Looking at…</p><p>No. No, not this. You must have caused some...some sort of unstable universal singularity. You fell in! You fell into the pit, you know you did! You <em>failed</em>, because of that-</p><p>...That.</p><p>What was it, a rocket? No, you didn’t...you decided against bringing the rocket today. The cannon? No, same problem. Too destructive.</p><p>A bridge? No, because you couldn’t think of where to put it. Same with the, the catapult, and the vaulting pole.</p><p>The go-kart? No, because you already had your scooter! And you wouldn’t just jump like an idiot, that may have worked on the Airship, but not here!</p><p>You…</p><p>How many times have you been here?</p><p> </p><p>There’s something in your hands. How long have you been holding something?</p><p>You look down. It’s…</p><p>The <em>teleporter</em>.</p><p>You remember using this, now. Six different times, in fact, and only one of those times did you any good at all! Even then, you didn’t even need to use it! This thing…</p><p>It’s <em>completely</em> useless! 0/5 stars!</p><p>You don’t even think before smashing the emergent piece of junk on the floor of the catwalk. All you can see is the sheen of the green buttons splintering upon contact, the bright red GO button cracked and half-pressed. There. You never had to deal with it again, and neither would the rest of you.</p><p>As if it was responding to your wishes, the teleporter crackled with green energy and warped out of sight. And then, so do you.</p><p>You feel your body fragment and rip itself away from its previous location, the canned air of the satellite being replaced with rushing wind as you fall from the sky. The ground is far below you, and then it isn’t as you land on soft snow and not as soft stone. It’s all replaced by hot sand in an instant, both familiar and not.</p><p>You try to pull yourself to your feet before the sand below you is replaced by cold concrete. There are people- oh god, the <em>military</em>. You’re still wanted! The troops are shocked and they pull their weapons as you leap to your feet, hands raised, and your shoes land in lava instead. It’s so hot, too hot, you leap from the magma,</p><p>And smack your head on a tree branch, landing in the cold and briny depths of the ocean. You didn’t get a good breath in, so you’ll probably drown if you don’t get to the surface. Or suffocate if you stay in space for much longer.</p><p>Thankfully you’re rescued from space and dropped in front of the city hall of West Mesa, lying prone on the road and hearing a truck coming for you. It’s replaced with the arid wastes where the Toppat airship had landed, and then-</p><p>Where was this? A painting?                                                      </p><p>                                                      Is this where the rocket launched?</p><p>You were going to have fever and chills by the time this was done-!</p><p>Space was cold,                                            </p><p>You were alone,</p><p>                                                            This was a bad time,</p><p>It’s too much!</p><p>                                                 Too fast!</p><p>It was just a pit,                                                 </p><p>You didn’t-!</p><p>You shouldn’t have tried to<em> rob the bank</em> in the first place!</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The industrial hum of an air filtration system fills your body, and doesn’t go away. You were...stable. <em>Alive</em>, even. And…</p><p>In the vault, with the Emerald.</p><p>...You’d have the time to process the trauma from seeing dozens of universes converging at once when you <em>weren’t</em> in a heist. For now, you’re powered by adrenaline and the desire to complete your collection.</p><p>Now, how to get this Emerald...</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks to BatsInTheBelfry for this prompt! I had a lot of fun with it!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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